No more W&SR! As of the 28th January, the company ceased operations, leaving North East Wales without any direct links to London using Inter-City style trains. Around 50 staff loose their jobs which is not fun at all in the current climate.

W&SR had introduced its refurbished trains just over a year ago, bringing a generally better level of service but it seems, despite high passenger satisfaction levels, there were insufficient numbers of them to keep the service going.

Despite living so far to the north, I made every effort to photograph W&SR trains and I am glad I did. This shows, amongst other notable railway company closures, that photographing everything is important as changes can occur so quickly.

Dapol was a big supporter of W&SR and produced a lovely train book set with Class 67, DVT and coaching stock. Dapol also produced special edition Class 67s for W&SR for sale on its trains. I think W&SR will be much missed.

The latest Nairnshire Modelling Supplies water slide transfer sheet is now available, for BR Large Logo in BR blue livery, with the same goodly mix of elements on it and at the same £3.95 per sheet price. The principle remains the same: Low cost, high quality (Microscale prints them) and carefully researched from the prototype and reference material. The concept of providing as much as possible on one sheet to keep costs down and to avoid the need to buy more than one or two sheets to complete one model is continued with this new sheet. As usual, by careful design and sheet layout, we have kept the costs down to provide some of the finest and cost effective water slide transfers for D&E modellers possible.

PLEASE NOTE: All the elements of our sheets are taken and measured from the real thing, after careful research and verification against various information sources. Remember, you will have to replace the whole TOPS number when renumbering a loco or coach because the manufacturers do not always get the numbers correctly sized on their models and we cannot match, on one sheet, every printed variation produced by the manufacturers of ready to run models. Also, when scaled down to 4mm scale for OO/EM/P4 gauge, the livery elements, particularly small numbers, will appear very fine. Measure a ‘real’ number and one soon realises that the mainstream manufacturers print their number sets in a heavy style.

Priced at £3.95 per sheet, this pack is good value for money and includes the Class 40 number for those wishing to do a ‘heritage’ repaint of preserved 40 145 in Large Logo Livery together with the regular large Logo classes: 37, 47, 50, 56, 73 etc. So, what are we working on for NMS-5 and NMS-6? It looks like it will be BR sector locos and a sheet for those painting in BR Railfreight grey and red stripe livery. There’s a little work still to do on them, and we are well down the line with the Railfreight Sector badges too. Watch this space!

Yeah, it’s an ugly brute. But there’s something about these GE Class 70s that Freightliner has acquired.

Love them or hate them, it translates in an amazing-looking model in 4mm scale.
Let’s be honest – there’s not a jot of design to them, they are purely functional. However, think back to the BR standard steam locos which also were functional. And pretty ugly compared to some of the graceful steam locomotives that operated until the end of steam. Nowadays, they have a huge following amongst both steam enthusiasts and BR steam era modellers.

There’s something strangely compelling about an ugly freight engine and this one will make a real change from Class 66s!Bachmann has done a nice job of the model – it’s one of the general release ones numbered 70 006. PowerHaul 70 001 has been offered as a special edition model which is now lists on Ebay for silly money from time to time. Here’s my pictures and strangely enough, as ugly usually does, it makes a great looking model.

Welcome to OMWB (On My Work Bench). I will be blogging about my latest projects and other happenings in the world of model railways and my life in general.
Some non-railway subjects may creep in: the daily antics of our four cats, renewable energy, gardening, travel, life in the Scottish Highlands and many of the other things that make up the work bench of life.